Ontology-Driven Design of an Energy Management System

This paper summarizes experience with the design of an adaptive, customizable, and service-oriented energy monitoring and control system for smart energy grids and microgrids. Nowadays, energy generation, transmission and distribution networks evolve towards an increasing presence of distributed electricity generation including solar panels, wind, co-generation units and other renewable or fossil-based energy sources. The aim of the designed application is to support decision making in the area of local neighborhood energy networks. The application is considered as an open information platform that will allow near real-time optimization of generation and consumption matching in residential, commercial buildings and neighborhoods. Design of such complex energy management system is difficult task itself. This aspect puts high requirements on used modeling language and design tool. Furthermore, the platform is developed by multiple partners from different language regions and explicit formulation of terminology makes the design easier. Three applicable languages (UML, XML, and OWL) and associated design tools are discussed in text.